Quote:
Originally Posted by Hot_Flatus
A match like this really has to hurt for a guy who seemed like he had come a long ways in terms of keeping his floor higher than it has been in previous years.
Not to take anything away from Cressy - he has been playing lights out on grass. But, for a talent like FAA to not break his service once, or really even threaten to do so in 4 sets is unacceptable. Felix and his team need to take a good hard look at his return game and figure out why it has become such an issue.
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I thought Felix returned okay today, but as I mentioned earlier, Cressy was basically hitting two 1st serves for most of the match. Maxime seemed to accept the fact that he was going to hit a few more double faults using that approach, but it was his best way to hold serve. I'm not sure what the overall stats were for rallies exceeding five shots, but I have to think that FAA won at least 75% of those rallies. I think Felix had only one break point the entire match which shows a) how well Cressy was serving and b) Felix not being able to get enough serves into play.
Also, I think Felix was just too tentative today, it looked like to me that he was waiting for Cressy to crack under pressure and it just didn't happen. Two tough losses back-to-back on grass for FAA (first to Hurkacz and now to Cressy). Last six sets on grass he's played have seen five of them go to tie-breaks with Felix winning one of them. Very slim margins out there.